Luna noticed something.
Ever since she came to this cave, Nagato had never taken the initiative to speak to her.
It wasn’t the coldness of “ignoring her,” but rather another, more subtle sense of distance.
He would help take care of her, add wood to the campfire while she was asleep, and quietly listen from the side when Yahiko taught her how to steal.
But he never spoke up on his own.
He only watched her silently from the shadows.
Sometimes when Luna woke up in the middle of the night, she would see that Nagato was still awake.
He sat by the campfire, the firelight casting mottled shadows of light and dark on his face, his strange eyes staring straight at the flames.
Those eyes…
Luna knew that was the Rinnegan.
She didn’t know if Nagato himself had already discovered the abnormality of those eyes.
The turning point happened on the third day of the cured meat incident.
That day, Yahiko went out to “work” again, and Konan went to wash clothes in a nearby river ditch.
Only Luna and Nagato were left in the cave.
Luna was sitting at the cave entrance, practicing the flower-folding technique Konan had taught her with a piece of paper.
Her fingers were much more agile than a few days ago, and although the petals she folded were still crooked, at least they could be recognized as a flower.
She was focusing on wrestling with that piece of paper when she suddenly heard a slight sound of footsteps from behind.
Luna turned her head and found that Nagato had somehow stood not far behind her.
He was also holding a piece of paper in his hand, with a somewhat cramped expression, as if he had made a great determination to walk over.
“You…” Nagato spoke, his voice very low, carrying a sense of awkwardness from being unaccustomed to talking to people, “Can you teach me this thing you folded?”
Luna was stunned for a moment.
This was the first time Nagato had taken the initiative to speak to her.
“…Sure.” She snapped back to reality, moved aside to make room for Nagato, “Sit down, I’ll teach you.”
Nagato hesitated for a moment, then sat down beside her.
The two sat side by side at the cave entrance, with about a fist’s distance between them.
The sound of rain pattered outside, and the air was filled with the damp scent of soil.
Luna slowed down her movements, teaching Nagato how to fold paper step by step.
Nagato learned very earnestly, almost rigidly imitating her every movement, but his hands were obviously not good at such delicate work.
That piece of paper was crumpled by him, and the shape he folded was worlds apart from a flower.
Luna looked at the crumpled ball of paper in his hand and couldn’t help smiling.
Nagato’s face turned slightly red, but he didn’t say anything, just lowered his head and continued to struggle with that piece of paper.
After a moment of silence, Nagato suddenly spoke.
His voice was very soft, as if he were talking to himself:
“Your hair… is red.”
Luna’s movement paused for a second.
“Yeah.”
“Mine is red too,” Nagato said, his fingers unconsciously rubbing the edge of the paper, “Ever since I was little, I haven’t seen many people with the same hair color as me.”
Luna didn’t speak.
She vaguely felt that Nagato wanted to say something.
“Once, Yahiko and I saw a red-haired woman on the street,” Nagato’s voice was calm, yet carried a strange emotion, “Yahiko told me to go up and ask her if she was a member of my clan. I mustered up the courage to chase after her, but that woman turned her head, glanced at me, and said, ‘Get lost, you filthy brat’.”
Luna’s fingers curled slightly.
“After that, I stopped asking.” Nagato lowered his head, the firelight shining on his face, making the dangling lock of red hair look somewhat shiny, “Anyway, it’s useless to ask.”
The cave fell silent.
Only the pattering rain outside and the occasional crackle from the campfire remained.
Luna opened her mouth, wanting to say something, but she herself didn’t know what to say.
Actually, your clansmen are called the Uzumaki Clan, an ancient family that once flourished, renowned throughout the world for their powerful Sealing Jutsu and massive Chakra.
They are distant relatives of the Senju Clan and have inextricable ties with the Konoha Hidden Village.
But that clan has already been wiped out.
Amidst the wars of the Ninja World, the political struggles, and the silence in which even the Village called Konoha failed to protect them, the Uzumaki Clan has become a historical term.
Nagato is probably one of the last remaining members of the Uzumaki Clan in this world.
And she, Luna, is one now too.
Should she tell him?
Luna’s fingertips tightened slightly.
The plot she knows tells her that Nagato’s yearning for his own identity is one of the core pain points running through his character.
If she tells the truth, what would Nagato think?
Would he want to find Konoha?
Would he want to search for those clansmen who no longer exist?
Or would he suffer even more?
But what if she doesn’t tell him?
Let him continue to hold onto the hope that “maybe in some corner of this world, there are still my clansmen”?
Is that a kind of tenderness, or another form of cruelty?
“Luna.” Nagato suddenly called her name, his voice carrying a trace of anticipation that even he hadn’t noticed, “Do you… do you know anything about red hair?”
Luna raised her head, meeting Nagato’s gaze.
Those eyes, the Rinnegan that would make the entire Ninja World tremble in the future, were quietly looking at her at this moment.
There was no sense of oppression, no deterrent force, just the look of a child yearning to know where he came from.
Luna’s lips moved.
She suddenly felt so fucked up.
She knew so many things.
She knew the future of the Akatsuki Organization, knew that Yahiko would die, knew that Nagato would turn dark, knew that Konan would burn everything with six hundred billion explosive tags.
She knew the cruel trajectory of this world, and knew that the three people in front of her would struggle in the darkness for more than a decade.
Yet she had no way to answer a simplest question…
“Why is your hair red?”
“…I don’t know,” Luna heard herself say, “Just like you, I’ve been alone since I was little. No one has ever told me these things.”
She lied.
Nagato’s gaze dimmed for a moment, but quickly returned to calm.
He nodded, as if he had expected this answer all along.
“Is that so… You don’t know either.”
He lowered his head, looking at the ball of paper in his hand that had been crumpled by him, and suddenly reached out to unfold it piece by piece, smoothing it out again as if doing something very important.
“Yahiko said, don’t mind these things,” Nagato said in a low voice, “He said what color the hair is doesn’t matter; what matters is that we are living well right now.”
“Yahiko is right,” Luna said.
“Yeah.” Nagato nodded, fell silent for a moment, and then spoke again, “But to be honest… if one day, if possible, I still want to find them. My clansmen.”
He raised his head, looking at the rain curtain outside, his gaze as if looking at a very, very distant place.
“Even if it’s just a glance. I want to know what kind of people they are, how they live, and whether they… are just like me.”
She lowered her eyes, staring at the half-folded paper flower in her hand, and remained silent for a long time.
Then she spoke:
“If… if one day they are really found, but you find out that they aren’t doing well?”
Nagato was stunned for a moment and looked at her.
“Or rather, they are no longer around.” Luna’s voice was very soft, “In that case, would you still want to go look for them?”
This question was like a small pebble dropped into calm water.
For a long time, there was only the sound of rain and wind in the cave.
Then he spoke, his voice not loud, but very clear:
“…I still want to know.”
Luna turned her head and looked at him.
Nagato didn’t avoid her gaze.
In those purple eyes, there was no evasion, no hesitation, only a quiet, resolute light:
“Even so… I still want to know.”
Luna lowered her head, placed the half-folded paper flower on her knees, and slowly smoothed the edges of the petals with her fingers.
“Alright,” she said softly, “Then if one day… I hear anything, I’ll tell you.”
Nagato was stunned for a moment and looked at her.
Luna raised her head and smiled at him:
“I promise.”
When Yahiko came back in the evening, he brought back a small bag of rice and a few radishes.
Seeing Nagato and Luna sitting side by side at the cave entrance folding paper, he was stunned for a moment, then grinned and laughed.
Without saying a thing, he turned around and went to show off his spoils to Konan.
When turning around, Yahiko secretly winked at Nagato.
Nagato pretended not to see it, but the tips of his ears turned slightly red.